King Eadred and King Eadwig

Today is the 1060th anniversary of the death of King Eadred at Frome in 955. He was aged about 30 and appears to have suffered an illness which affected his ability to eat solid food and also to have had a permanent disability which affected his feet. Nonetheless he was not inactive as a ruler.
There is a brief online biography of the King at Eadred, and the more detailed and academic life of him by Ann Williams in the Oxford DNB can be read at Eadred [Edred]

The year after his accession he was recognised as King by the York Vikings in 947 at Tanshelf - the later Pontefract - and in the next year, following a northern revolt against his rule marched north and in 948 burned Ripon, including St Wilfrid's church there, and fought a battle at Castleford.

His successor was his nephew, Eadwig, who was born in 940, the son of King Edmund I who had been accidentally killed attempting to stop a fight between two retainers in 946. The new King was remembered as a good looking teenager, but one who got a bad press from monastic writers. There is anonline account of his life and reign at Eadwig, and Simon Keynes' Oxford DNB life can be read at Eadwig [Edwy] There is also a useful piece about the reign at Anglo-Saxons.net : Eadwig All-Fair


It was following his coronation at Kingston on Thames in late January 956 that probably the most famous event of his short reign occurred - having slipped away from the coronation feast the fifteen year old King was found cavorting ( make of that what you will ) with his future wife and her mother by St Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury, and the Bishop of Lichfield, who dressed him and returned him to the feast. The young King was, in consequence, no fan of Dunstan, and Dunstan's part in dissolving the King's marriage as within the prohibited degrees of affinity and against the King's will did not help. Hence the monastic bad press for the King. As the saint's modern biographer, Douglas Dales, remarked in a talk I heard him give whilst on a retreat at Glastonbury, Eadwig's behaviour was that of a typical teenager - and Douglas Dales was speaking as a public schoolmaster.

In 957 the King's younger brother Edgar was recognised as King of Mercia - which looks to be his creation as Junior King and his recognition as heir apparent. Two years later he succeeded Eadwig when in 959 he died at Gloucester.

St Dunstan in medieval stained glass

Gordon Plumb has posted the following images on the Medieval Religion discussion group of St Dunstan, the great tenth century church man and staesman, whose feast day falls today, and about whom there is an online account here:

Cockayne Hatley, Bedfordshire, nII, 2b:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/2285002809

York, St Olave, East window, 2b:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/630752560

and detail:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/6307006267

Trinity College, Oxford, Old Library East window:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/17681324270

and detail of head:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/17682614669

Wells Cathedral, Lady Chapel, sII, C2 - head:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/15139000242

Dunstan had been abbot of Glastonbury before becoming archbishop. He had a high grading in the Wells calendar before the mid 11th century. One of the Cathedral bells bore his name.

John Dillon posted further about St Dunstan as follows:

Dunstan prostrating himself before Christ as depicted in the later tenth century on fol. 1r of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Auct. F.4.32 (a composite manuscript known as Dunstan's Classbook as much of it can be connected with Dunstan's teaching activity at Glastonbury):

 Image: saintedwardbrotherhood.org

http://www.saintedwardbrotherhood.org/images/dunstanLarge.jpg

The inscription is in verse. Almost certainly by Dunstan himself, it reads, Dunstanum memet clemens, rogo, Christe, tuere / Tenarias me non sinas sorbsisse procellas ('I beseech you, gentle Christ, to protect me, Dunstan. Do not permit the storms of Hell to suck me in.'). Another translation will be found in Paul Hayward's description of the manuscript (see the discussion of its first part [Eutyches with Old Breton glosses]) here.

Neither translation does full justice to the word play clemens ... procellas. In Dunstan's phrasing Christ is imagined not only as merciful but also as a locus of (metaphorical) fair weather opposing the the storms of hell.

The Coronation of King Edgar 973

May 11th 973 was Pentecost Sunday and the day chosen for the coronation - or perhaps or probably - re- coronation of King Edgar at Bath abbey. Today is therefore the 1040th anniversary of that event.

King Edgar
This illumination from 966 shows him already crowned, seven years before the ceremony of 973

Image:nndb.net

The life of the King by Ann Williams from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography can be read here. He may not have been the most physically impressive of monarchs - William of Malmesbury (c.1080-1143) described his as being " extremely small both in stature and bulk..."  in his Gesta Regum Anglorum - but he was an extremely successful ruler, and his coronation at Bath proved to be the precedent for all subsequent such ceremonies. Thus the coronation of the present Queen 980 years later in 1953, followed the lines laid down for her ancestor.

It was not the first coronation of an English king - Mercian and West Saxon rulers had been crowned before him, but the ceremony at Bath appears to have been conceived to emphasise the divinely sanctioned royal authority of king as not hitherto. It may have originate d in a reworking of the idea of a ceremonial crown wearing, as was certainly the later practice of Anglo-Norman kings at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, and elevated to a new, amplified  rite of coronation.

King Edgar may had been consecrated first time upon his accession in Mercia c. 957 or in Wessex c. 959, but there is no contemporary source to verify it. A doubtful evidence is given in the work of Ralph of Diceto, who recorded two consecrations of Eadgar. According to Ralph, the allegedly first consecration was performed by Archbishop Oda at Canterbury:

Edgarus rex Anglorum Dunstanus abbas ab eo revocatus, ecclesiae Wigonensis electus antistes, consecratus est ab Odone Cantuariensi archiepiscopo apud Cantuariam.

If Ralph recorded a true historical fact, it could not have happened later than in 961, when Archbishop Oda died, but the validity of this claim is hard to prove. On the contrary, the consecration of Eadgar at Bath in 973 is well documented in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which includes a poetic account of this solemn ceremony held on Pentecost day (11 May 973). Further details are found in John of Worcester's entry for 973:

Edgar the Pacific, king of England, received the benediction of the bishops SS. Dunstan and Oswald, and all the other bishops of England; and was crowned and anointed as king with great pomp and ceremony at the city of Acamann [Bath?] ... on the fifth of the ides of May, being Whitsunday.

Ralph of Diceto recorded that this consecration was performed by two archbishops, Dunstan of Canterbury and Oswald of York:

Eadgarus rex Anglorum ab archiepiscopis Dunstano Dorobernensi et Oswaldo Eboracensi consecratus est in regem in civitate Acheman, qui duos filios Eadmundum et Egelredum ex Ælfritha Ordgari ducis filia suscepit.

The choice of Bath for this great occasion seems likely to have been dictated by several factors. As the largest town in Somerset it was at the heaert of both the West Saxon dynasty's patrimony, and close to Dunstan's base at Glastonbury abbey. Bath was a Roman settlement in origin, and Anglo-Saxon kings often liked to emphasie ther inhertance from the Roman empire. Like Aachen, coronation place and administrative centre for Charlemagne and his successors, Bath had thermal springs which had been a Roman spa, and continued to be used for healing. The symbolism of baptism and regeneration, of healing and life giving waters would be appreciated by those attending.

The choice of Pentecost also emphasied the King's sacrality, marked out to rule on the great feast of the bestowal of the Holy Spirit. The King and Archbishop stressed this further by holding the coronation when the King was  29, or, more signifiantly, in his 30th year - 30 being the minimum age for episcopal consecration.

Following the coronation the King travelled to Chester, where he was ceremonially rowed along the river Dee from the city to the church of St John the Baptist by six or, according to later writers, eight tributary kings. This symbolised King Edgar's ascendancy as head of the the rulers of Britain. In later centuries it was recalled, notably in the Stuart era, where the scene was depicted on King Charles I's great ship Sovereign of the Seas - and one of the shortlived sons of the future King James II was named Edgar in honour of the Anglo-Saxon monarch.


Something of the politico-religious ethos and culture of the reign can be seen in this complete view of Winchester New Minster charter of 966 - one of the great surviving treasures of the period - showing the King, flanked by saints, offering his charter for the abbey to Christ in Majesty:

New Minster charter of 966
 BL Cottonian MS  Vespasian A viii

Image: Wikipedia

A similar idea of the royal state kept by the King and his archbishop can also be seen here:

King Edgar and St Dunstan from the Canterbury Regularis Concordia 

Image:traditioninaction.com 

St Dunstan

Today is the feast of that great tenth century Englishman Saint Dunstan (909-988) - Abbot of Glastonbury and Archbishop of Canterbury. Here are two posts I wrote about him last year - St Dunstan and St Dunstan addenda.

I am adding a photograph of the whole page with the self-portrait of St Dunstan prostrate at the feet of Christ from the Glastonbury classbook which is now in the Bodleian Library:

Note the later inscription at the top of the page about it being in the "proper hand"of St Dunstan.

St Dunstan addenda

I have based this on John Dillon's posting on the Medieval Religion discussion group.

Dunstan's cult commenced almost immediately after his death; his first Vita (BHL 2342) was already in existence in 1004.
An expandable view of the tenth-century drawing of Dunstan prostrating himself before Christ, which I used yesterday, is here:
This is from fol.1r of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Auct. F. 4. 32.
This is a composite manuscript known as Dunstan's Classbook as much of it can be connected with Dunstan's teaching activity at Glastonbury. The two-line prayer Dunstanum memet clemens, rogo, Christe, tuere / Tenarias me non sinas sorbsisse procellas ('I beseech you, kind Christ, to protect me, Dunstan. Do not permit the storms of Hell to suck me in.') is almost certainly of Dunstan's own composition. An online facsimile of the manuscript is here, and there is a fuller account of it than the one linked to from the facsimile  here:

There are two views of St Dunstan's Church, Canterbury, the first to be dedicated to him, although it has been rebuilt since, and now contains the head of St Thomas More which was buried there with Margaret Roper, here and here. There is a page on St Dunstan's Church, Mayfield in East Sussex  here.

St Dunstan

Today is the feast of St Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury and Archbishop of Canterbury, who died on this day in 988. He was one of the dominant figures of the tenth century and the alliance of the Englsih Crown with the Catholic Church that created a vibrant and fertile tradition in both the ecclesial and secular world. Not least amongst his achievements is the creation of the ordo for the coronation of King Edgar at Bath in 973, usually regarded as the basis of all subsequent English Coronation rites down to that of the present Queen in 1953. 

A self-portrait of St Dunstan.  Detail from the Glastonbury Classbook. The MS is in the Bodleian Library. There is a biography of him here .  In 1988, back in my Anglo-Catholic days, I was able to attend part of the milleniary celebrations of St Dunstan at Glastonbury. The high point was the visit of Archbishop Runcie to celebrate at the Pilgrimage in honour of his great predecessor, and it was a suitably splendid occasion, with a sense of history.  Which links me to a point raised by Fr Hunwicke on his blog, as to how St Dunstan fits with the concept of an Anglican patrimony that can be exercised under Anglicanorum coetibus. The fine tuning of that point I will leave to others, indeed those qualified to comment from their own personal experience - I am neither in orders, nor married - but St Dunstan is unquestionably part of the wider patrimony of Catholic and Anglo-Catholic England, and that fact cannot be ignored. St Dunstan typifies that partnership of Church and Crown that underlay the tenth century English achievement, and that of subsequent centuries. It was not infrequently a tense relationship, and it had one or two spectacular explosions, but until Henry VIII seized power over the Church it served both parties and the realm well. If the Anglo-Catholic claim to continuity, and indeed a patrimony, anterior to 1533 is to be made it clearly must include St Dunstan, and thereby all that is indicated by that. In such a situation, and with all respect clerical marriage is an adiaphora. St Dunstan may not have liked it, but it took another couple of centuries to deal with the issue. In the wider cause of the unity of Christ's church it can be assimilated and resolved - it should not be a stumbling block.